kitchen sink crafts

Last week we took out a book of arts + crafts projects from the library called "Create with Maisy". My son found two projects he wanted to try: "making a food picture" and "paper lanterns". There are now paper lanterns (if you'd like to make some you'll find more here) all over our place now. The project I photographed was the food picture. We live in a fairly small space, so I like any craft project that allows carefree messiness which can be easily vaccuumed. The Maisy book has a different version of this classic project than the one below, which is also very good.

This is such a simple project, you've probably done it many times! I put out some small bowls on the table (a muffin tin would also work well) and some open cannisters of dried foods. Then I gave my son, aged 3, a small 1/8 cup measuring scoop. He could scoop a full measure of any of them into the bowls. This was a really fun part of the project for him. When he was done, I put away the canisters, put a big pad of paper onto the table and gave him some washable children's glue (the kind with the squirty top).

I arranged the little bowls around the paper and made sure everything was in reach. I also gave him a wet cloth to wipe the glue off his hands and left him to it.

Setting up crafts and making them comfortable has become a big priority here: as low stress as possible for both of us. Having a wet cloth next to his work was really helpful. He didn't need to stop to ask for help from me or become frustrated. He knew what to do when his hands became uncomfortably sticky. The other thing I found helpful was only giving him items that could be easily vaccuumed or picked up. If we were in the backyard, turmeric or cinnamon would have been really fun to use, but we used lentils, pasta, bay leaves, rice, pumpkin seeds and other things that are easy to clean up.

Please let us know if you have any good tips for keeping your craft times relaxed and autonomous, we'd love to hear them.

washi tape trains

We've hit some stumbling blocks in the drawing department at our home recently. My son will paint or do sculptures, but drawing (or especially writing) are very frustrating for him. He wants them to look "right" and when they don't he doesn't see the point, really.

We received a set of carte da disegno (drawing sheets) by enzo mari. These packs contain long sheets with drawing of empty train cars, freight ships, zoo cages as well as empty sheets. Partly the subject matter  of this set, combined with the clear drawing structure really launched a lot of drawing activity — it was great. We started with the freight ship and he drew black coal for each barge. Then for the train, he diligently gave each car some cargo — my favourite was the donut car (not pictured). 

When we used up the printed sheets, I made him some more with washi tape. You just need wheels (which, theoretically, your children could draw) and then you make the cars with long pieces of tape. He added some in for the track, too. We had a lot of fun with these and at the end, we also got one completely free-form train (bottom), which was a big step forward.

Snufkin hats

Snufkin, the vagabond and philosopher, arrives each spring to Moominvalley to set up camp, fish, and comfort the small creatures of Moominvalley. He is always wearing a green hat, sometimes decorated with flowers and sometimes with feathers.

If you would like to make your own Snufkin hat, you can use this Pilgrim's hat template, using green paper instead of black. Then decorate. Instead of gluing the headband, we cut notches like this.

Make your hat soon. At the first sign of autumn, Snufkin slips away from the valley and doesn't return until spring comes again.

ringo atelier

Ringo atelier is a creative studio, and resource, for children and their blog is lovely, too. Lots of their drawing activities have a PDF to print out and do at home. They have loads of pages to colour and develop, like this invent the fruit that goes with this leaf, which we tried yesterday during a rainy day

and this construct a city (this one is meant to be for collage, but we painted and scribbled them)

There are also some really great projects that we haven't yet tried, like the à la manière de section, with projects inspired by the work of artists like David Hockney or Sonia Delaunay. I think the David Hockney one is perfect for July, and I will put in a little translation here (find the original project here). Observe water (in your bath, swimming pool, by the sea or edge of a lake...), in the style of painter David Hockney. Have fun trying to reproduce the waves, the reflections, the colour of the water. To do this, use watered-down paint, sponges, tissues and different papers. Look carefully at this painting of a swimming pool (below, left)

The 1 livre—1 book section has a nice library of books, too.

The pineapple bird

Ooh, ok, I think this is a pretty good one. We found a video on youtube called Jim Henson on Making Muppets, 1969, from Iowa Public Television. Jim Henson shows children how to make puppets from household objects like socks, potatoes, spoons and tennis balls. It is great!

Augs and I watched it together and then gathered up some materials and made a handful of puppets and little movies.

The dish mop lion, Auggie was very excited to make a pink scarf for the lion because "he was cold".

Wooden spoon puppet.

The pineapple bird. I put on the eyes and Auggie did the nose with a sharpie. By the way, he was horrified by the feeling of his finger in the potato, so we poked a pencil in the bottom and he could  hold that instead. I don't have a picture, though — this is my finger. The pineapple bird is the only one who received a name from the Augs, he is special.

I had a bunch of yarn and old knitting swatches out, so these plastic spoon guys have scraps of yarn and a knitting swatch taped on as hair (or hat?). I cut out circles and rectangles out of sticky labels from my studio and gave them to Augs for the faces to colour and place. He was incredibly careful about placing them evenly on the face — he really likes some things to be straight and even. This is an aside, but I was very slightly concerned about how careful he is with crafts, as I don't want him to feel pressured while he makes things — however, yesterday he created a new technique of covering his hands in different colours of ink, yelling "sputz, sputz, sputz" (and also, "look at my fancy nails") and making crazy fingerprint paintings, so I think he's not turning into too much of a perfectionist and it's all ok. Phew.

My favourite part of this guy are the pieces of tape Auggie put over each eye — they are "goggles". Ha!

Textile crafts from the Brooklyn Children's Museum

This post has moved here.

Lanterns

This weekend we'll be at attending the annual New Year's parade. And we're making classic lanterns for the house.

There a many good tutorials online to make paper lanterns. It couldn't be easier. We didn't use a template, we just folded and cut. It doesn't matter if the cuts are perfectly straight or even. Ours were very uneven and wonky, but you can't really tell at all when they are folded.

We used some red vellum paper we had left over from making mini kites. We punched some flower-shaped holes along the bottom for decoration. We received our decorative hole punch as a party favour and I'm won over. I never would have considered buying one, but we've had a lot of fun with it and Auggie loves it. Some glitter and stickers came next.

We punched two holes in the top to run thread through (we used silver/gold metallic thread leftover from hanging gingerbread ornaments on the tree).

Auggie was into doing some of the cuts for the lantern, but he was more interested in hanging up the red lanterns than decorating them. However, he came up with his own lantern idea, which I really liked.

Early Christmas trees

We don't yet have the tree. But, as some of us are quite excited about decorating already we painted some trees onto construction paper with washable poster paint for the little ones to decorate.

Then, for ornaments, we cut shapes out of scrap origami,

Puzzles

We've made some simple block puzzles for you to print and make, one from each book (high quality PDF link).

Simply print these out and cut along the dotted line with scissors. You can also glue your printout to a piece of card or cardboard and cut them out with a craft knife if you would like the puzzles to be a bit more durable.

Toothpaste box train

We made a train from boxes based on a craft project in Chirp magazine. If you enjoy this type of project, you might also like the Wheels project we did for Chirp. Here's how we made it.

Blow, Drip and Rorschach Paintings

Well, we set out the other morning to make some blow paintings. What could be more fun. Put a blob of runny-ish water-based paint on a piece of paper. Give your kids a straw. (Explain clearly the difference between blowing and sucking, if your kids are little, or it could be a much too exciting morning). The kids blow through the straw and off goes the paint into beautiful unpredictable forms. Of course, your paint consistency has to be just so. Ours was too runny at first, and the kids mostly sprayed each other.

Then our paint was not runny enough, but perfect for drip painting — Put a blob of paint at one end of your paper. Tilt the paper so the paint drips down, then turn the paper left or right as the paint guides itself around the page.

A little giveaway: kids' knitting needles!

This is a cute one. We found these children's knitting needles in NYC (at purlsoho), and knew we needed to get them as a giveaway.

Rock Frogs & Toads for Leo Lionni

This post has moved.

Shoelace Sewing

Simple shapes with pre-cut holes that your little one can use by sewing around the edges (this isn't a practical sewing project). This activity was originally inspired by a 5-year old boy we spoke to. His kindergarten class has a wooden sewing set which is very popular with the children. Here are instructions and templates so you can make your own sewing set.

This is great for the 3-5 set and is a surprisingly easy craft project to set up.

Windy's Boat

A paper boat for Windy (PDF), from the book Foggy.

Update: you can see photos of the paper boat here.

Colour Wheel

Some knitters use these to help them design their projects.

Children can make these to learn about colour. Here is a simple kid's project from Wee folk art to make a yarn colour wheel. You could do the same thing with scraps of paper or fabric, if you don't have yarn at your house.

wee folk art via craftzine.